Excuse the pun but it really did seem as if the camels were carrying everything but the kitchen sink on our safari into the Thar desert (including us) but of course they are not called the 'ships of the desert for nothing'.
We were totally overcharged for our safari when we should now know better by now but
that aside we were taken 85km by jeep into the heart of the hostile desert where we saw not a soul but desert people for two days. It was just the two of us, three camels, the camel driver and his boy Friday - a motley crew that made for interesting conversation around the embers of the campfire where under the stars we lazily compared rural life for Muslim villagers to the professional lives of the British. We weren't sure who were the happiest actually! With a Bullet beer (Special Brew has nothing on this 8% rocket fuel) for us and a coca-cola for our (Muslim) driver, we ate homemade chilly chicken with chapatis to mop it up and a strong helping of sand blown in for good measure.
Camels might be ships of the desert: sturdy, strong and able to travel for days without water but comfortable they are not. Steve (already bow-legged) now walks like John Wayne and Beth has seemingly permanent bruises on her butt cheeks. We did a five hour trek and people who do the three day version deserve a medal of endurance
in our opinion! Camping overnight in the sand dunes made it worthwhile though as we fell asleep under the stars using a cactus to shelter us from the swirling sand. Next morning over porridge eaten with our fingers and sweet, sweet chaye, the little boy started screaming in Hindi. Our camel driver leapt to his feet as we sat bewildered, cross-legged with porridge covering our mouths and dripping from our fingers (haven't quite mastered the whole eating with your fingers thing yet). Apparently a snake was the cause of concern and we saw its tail disappear into the thicket of the cactus bush before we could leap behind the camels. We learnt that snakes, scorpions and spiders are common during the dry period in the desert and we thanked Mohammad that we didn't posses that knowledge before we slept!
On the way back to the jeep we finally became more au fait with the operating instructions. Unlike horses, camels don't have a bit between their teeth but two
holes drilled either side of their nose (we were assured it's like ear piercing - painful at first but okay after they recover). Ropes are connected to the holes and unsurprisingly tugging on the reins gently moves them a lot. To make them go faster you click your tongue as if emulating a galloping horse for a child. We sounded ridiculous but it worked all the way back to the jeep and where we headed back to Jaiselmer, stopping only for photographs of some royal cenopaths situated in front of some wind turbines: a good example of new and old India even in the depths of the desert.
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